“Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.”

There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.

He that is gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion, will not feel himself quite secure, until he has also drawn his teeth.

As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.

Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

A society composed of none but the wicked could not exist; it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and without a flood, would be swept away from the earth by the deluge of its own iniquity.

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.

Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.

Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

Wisdom is not developable, as if it’s a matter of luck or personality or genetics. Well it’s just not the case.

The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.

Hitler had a plausible case to argue when he claimed that the Anschluss was only the application of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination.

I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.

the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.

They were asked to listen to the facts and apply the law to the best of their ability in a case the world was watching.

I think you don’t support people based on one or two cases of situations.

Though racism may be less blatant now in many cases, its existence is undeniable.